


My Head's Been Drowning

by HeiwanaKenomo



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Anxiety Attacks, Eating Disorders, Fluff, How Do I Tag, Kim Seungmin-centric, Multi, Panic Attacks, Sad, Self-Esteem Issues, Seungmin Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-02
Updated: 2019-03-02
Packaged: 2019-11-08 01:16:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,393
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17971712
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HeiwanaKenomo/pseuds/HeiwanaKenomo
Summary: There were so many moments Seungmin had made sure to better all of his members’ moods, be it discreetly or directly.Yet nobody seemed to be there when he most needed it.//The one time the voices get too much and Seungmin isn't able to hide it.





	My Head's Been Drowning

**Author's Note:**

> I KNOW ITS CLICHÉ I'M SORRY  
> i can't help it i'm a slut for clichés   
> i had lots of fun writing this, i hope you have just as much fun reading it!

Seungmin had never been one to need help and comfort, he had always been the one to help and comfort others. Sure, he seemed a bit annoying and rude with his members and friends, but they all knew they could rely on him when things got a little too much. And Seungmin may never admit it, but he loved helping his close ones, he loved being the one to make them feel better or to just change their mood even if sometimes his methods came off as annoying.

 

When Felix had first arrived in Korea, with absolutely no knowledge of the language, Seungmin had done his best to help him learn and better his speech. Of course, Chan had been there for the boy whenever he was feeling homesick since the two were quite literally going through the same thing.

 

Speaking of Chan, there had been countless times that the leader stayed a little too late at the company, or skipped one too many nights of sleep, thinking none of them would notice or mind at all. Seungmin did, though it took him some time. When he was watching the survival show he realized how hard Chan really worked for them. After that he’d do his best to convince the elder to come home and rest, or at least try to. There were many times that Seungmin had been with him during an anxiety attack or an extremely self-deprecating night.

 

The maknae, the victim most effected by Seungmin’s strange way of showing affection, had never been confident in anything he did. But when he was criticized a bit too harshly, Seungmin was there to tell him he did his best; when he felt a bit too lonely, Seungmin was there to remind him of his annoying but comforting presence; when he made a mistake or when his voice cracked, Seungmin was there to cheer him up and help him look back at those mistakes with a smile and laughter.

 

There were so many moments Seungmin had made sure to better all of his members’ moods, be it discreetly or directly.

 

Yet nobody seemed to be there when he most needed it.

 

People might look at Seungmin and think he’s just a simple boy that lacks no confidence in himself, that enjoys being his own person. They’ll see his persistence in college and his sometimes obnoxious teasing and think that he has it all together, that he knows how to love himself while helping others do so as well.

 

To be fair, Seungmin rarely ever showed the real version of himself. He wasn’t necessarily afraid of displaying emotions, he was actually quite open of the basic happiness or sadness, he didn’t hesitate to shed some tears even in front of cameras.

 

It wasn’t feelings he hid, no, feelings weren’t necessarily the bother. But the things he hid in the back of his mind, the things he stashed away from the rest of the world’s eye, were his insecurities. The toxic thoughts that more often than not ate him from the inside out had never been revealed to others, not even hinted at. Seungmin joked and exaggerated his self-confidence, he flattered himself with compliments while keeping inside the border of humble whenever he was on stage or being interviewed. But he never, not even once, revealed what he truly thought of himself.

 

He’d learned to live with them, the suffocating voices in his head. Even when it was really bad, he’d smile through it and pretend that everything was just peachy. Having others think he wasn’t doing as good as he seemed to be would only be a bother, it’d be useless.

 

But sometimes it was too much. Sometimes the voices screamed loud enough that he couldn’t even hear himself think. Sometimes he couldn’t help breaking down.

 

There would usually be this feeling right before something like that happened. Seungmin couldn’t really explain it. His head would feel a bit dizzy, his hands would feel kind of clammy and his body in general would be restless for some time. Then, like a wave crashing upon a city, everything would hit him hard, knock him off his feet. He always felt the drop coming and thankfully had the mind to slip away, to rush to the bathroom furthest from any human being, to lock himself away in his room with the excuse that he needed to study.

 

Then the voices would simply stop.

 

In their place was his own voice, repeating the same things they’d been telling him all day long. He’d let himself cry, let the tears fall down until his head was pounding and his throat was aching from all the sobbing. He’d let himself go to the point that his arms would often end up red and blotchy with faint marks of his nails dragging across his skin, sometimes even breaching it.

 

Once that was over he’d simply stay there, body limp and eyes lost in the nearest wall, head silenced from the harsh words. He’d silently lay down, empty and useless.

 

Ever since he was in high school the pattern had been the same, toxic thoughts all year long, except for a certain period that he might feel good about himself, might eat normally for some time, only for the thoughts to crash back into him and leave him breathless and broken. Still, he’d hide himself.

 

During the survival show he had, surprisingly, been relatively okay. He was getting closer to the people he’d most likely spend a huge chunk of his life with and, although he received some harsh criticism here and there, he was sometimes praised and that made him feel okay.

 

When they debuted it suddenly hit him. He realized that he didn’t deserve that spot on the team. He’d see the trainees trying hard to make it and would notice how they deserved to be in the team, not him. He was the least popular amongst the members, his dancing wasn’t the best and his singing didn’t even stand out, not next to Woojin’s powerful voice or Jeongin’s cute way of showing off his talents. Not to mention his looks, possibly the worst in the whole group. The only thing he was ever complimented on was his smaller frame, thin limbs and skinny torso. He wondered if he’d still receive those compliments if the public knew what he did to have those qualities.

 

But there was nothing he could do except train harder and work to do better, to make sure he deserved that spot in the group. He even applied to college and, surprisingly, got in. He knew he was overworking himself, being an idol was already tiring but being an idol attending college was beyond exhausting. But he wanted it, he wanted to make sure his father got his wish of his son attending the same college he did, he wanted to assure himself he’d live happily if the idol thing never worked out.

 

And he felt good about himself. He felt happy with his accomplishments. But there was this small voice in the back of his head, whispering a reminder that this was only part of the pattern, that it wouldn’t last more than a month or two.

 

It was right, the voice.

 

Promotional periods were exhausting and it didn’t help that he had exams to study for and obligatory attendance to certain classes, nor did the fact that he barely even ate aid him through those tough times. The public and attention they were receiving didn’t help him calm his nerves. It was disturbing how the criticism and hate only broke him down and how the praises from fans only made him desperately want to do better, made him feel undeserved of the love he received because no, he wasn’t all that. He was barely anything at all.

 

What could he do besides push forward and accept the voices’ words?

 

Nothing. So, he kept to himself and hid the thoughts even deeper by helping his members who also had it bad.

 

And for the first time since he’d first been introduced to the voices, he spent over a year with no break from them, no period of one or two months of feeling good about himself and eating more than one small meal a day. Only endless days of slowly tearing himself apart, each second shedding another bit of his will to persevere.

 

Hiding became more difficult. It was difficult to stray away from others when he quite literally spent the entirety of his days surrounded by his members.

 

He tried his best, but his best wasn’t enough.

 

That feeling he got before he broke down was taking longer to hit him. Instead of hours of restlessness it’d be only minutes before he’d snap. Some awful times even seconds.

 

He was growing careless and more often than not he would forget to hide the meal he had thrown away, or make up some excuse as to why none of them had seem them eat that simply didn’t add up. It led to some doubts and hesitant questions from his members, which he tried his best to deflect, be it with a laugh or a question of his own as a distraction.

 

One time Seungmin had been so stupid to forget a form his doctor had filled in for him on top of the counter. Jisung had been the one to find it and had rushed to their shared room to frantically ask him why the form said 47 kilos and why the name on top read Kim Seungmin. He did his best to convince him that it was a typo, that he had weighed himself at the appointment and that the scale had read 57, not 47.

 

His weight loss had been rapid and very sudden, an obvious shocker for some of the stylists at the company. Of course skipping endless meals and sometimes even going days without any more than a bite of a sugar free granola bar combined with hours of exercise would lead to him shedding off the already absent fat clinging onto his body.

 

Seungmin didn’t really do it to lose weight. Well, part of it was for the beauty, but that wasn’t the biggest reason. Having the power of choosing what he ate and how much he ate of it grounded him and made him feel in control of at least one thing in his life. That sense of control was why he’d go out of his way to challenge himself, to see how long it’d take for someone to notice he hadn’t taken a single bite of anything.

 

The starving had started maybe two or three years after the voices, when he was already training in the company. The pressure put on them to look and act a certain way, to do better and work to the point of exhaustion unfortunately got to him and worsened the voices, made him feel out of control, hence, the starving.

 

It didn’t help him physically, but it was his best option.

 

Yet after over a year since debut he had only gotten worse. Every single time he would snap he’d have only seconds to find a place to hide. The members and staff seemed to be noticing his lack of appetite even more, even some fans were asking him why he looked so empty and bony.

 

But he acted like it was all hidden, because admitting to his problems would be a bother to others. A useless bother, just like himself.

 

The first time he was found happened right after their comeback stage, merely minutes after it, in fact. He had been lucky, the restlessness had only come after their performance, after their brief talk with the fans. The second it hit him he had run off to find the furthest bathroom. He hadn’t even said anything before storming off, hadn’t been able to think of the right words to say.

 

Seungmin was barely able to lock the stall before he fell to his knees, quiet sobs breaking through his lips and painfully scratching his throat. His head was spinning as the bad thoughts filled his mind, as the words poisoned his entire body, leaving him heaving and gasping for air. His own breathing had filled his ears, blocking any other sounds.

 

Blocking the creaking of the bathroom door and the worried voice calling for him.

 

He only realized he wasn’t alone in the bathroom when he felt someone knocking on the stall’s door and finally heard Hyunjin’s voice calling his name.

 

“Seungmin?” The dancer softly repeated after Seungmin silenced his own crying. “Can you please open the door?”

 

That was when the panic streaked him. Not only had he been found but he had been heard by one of his closest members. He didn’t answer him, remained silent in hopes of the other boy giving up and leaving him alone, forgetting it’d ever happened. His nails were slowly and silently piercing his skin and the pain was the only thing keeping him from falling apart again.

 

“Seungmin, please open the door.” Hyunjin’s voice wasn’t as soft anymore, instead filled with worry and persistence. “I just need to talk to you.”

 

Seungmin couldn’t even try to stop the sob that ripped through him, making his entire body shake. He didn’t have the will to stop the sobs that followed the first, or the tears rushing down his face, nor his lungs gasping for air. He faintly heard Hyunjin call for him again before trying to forcefully open the door. Of course it didn’t budge.

 

“Open the door. Please just unlock it, Seungmin.” It didn’t sound like Hyunjin, the desperation and the worry, it seemed to foreign from what Seungmin knew of the boy. Perhaps it was some part of him that snapped at Hyunjin’s desperate tone and forced his arm to reach up and slide the lock open.

 

The second the click sounded the door was pushed open and Hyunjin rushed in, kneeling beside Seungmin, who hadn’t been able to stop the sobs just yet. The older frantically locked the door again and hesitantly reached for Seungmin’s hands, trying to pry them away from his face.

 

“Seungmin, hey. Look at me.”

 

He didn’t. He only sobbed harder and tucked his face in between his knees.

 

Useless. He was useless. He was only a bother to others. He had made so many mistakes during the stage, his voice didn’t sound good (it never did), his dancing was stiff and he had nearly ruined it for all of them. And now look at him, crying in the bathroom while Hyunjin worried for him, Hyunjin who was perfect in all levels, Hyunjin who he had taken care of and helped raise his confidence, Hyunjin who had known him so well.

 

“I said look at me.” Before he knew it, Hyunjin had gently reached for his face with delicate hands and had managed to pry him away from his own knees. Seungmin spared him a short glance before closing his eyes and silently letting the salty tears continue to flow down in a steady stream.

 

And then Hyunjin hugged him.

 

And then his own voice inside his head seemed to stop.

 

And then he almost felt okay.

 

Hyunjin was comforting him. For so long he had been the one to comfort the older boy, he had been the one to help him through tough times. But there they were, Hyunjin tightly wrapping his arms around Seungmin’s small frame as the younger could only cry and cry and cry.

 

“Please tell me what happened.” Hyunjin whispered once the crying had died down, still holding onto Seungmin in the comforting hug.

 

“Nothing.” Seungmin whispered back. “Just not feeling well.”

 

Silence.

 

“You know you can trust me, right?”

 

“Yeah.”

 

“And you know I can read you, right?”

 

Silence.

 

“And you know I can tell you’re lying, right?” Seungmin sniffled. “So, please tell me what’s been going on with you.”

 

“It’d really nothing, Hyunjin. I’ve just been stressed with school and promotions. I’ve just been tired, that’s all.” Seungmin muttered. Hyunjin pulled away and forced his head to tilt up, making his eyes meet the older boy’s worries ones.

 

“No. I know something’s up, Seungmin. I’ve known for a while. We all have.” Seungmin closed his eyes and felt his chest clench. “But I need you to tell me. I need you to tell me why you’ve been so quiet, why you’ve been locking yourself up in your room more than usual, why you haven’t been eating with us. I need to know the real reason as to why I hear you crying in the bathroom at three in the morning, why you seem to be avoiding all of us and why Felix came up to us crying and saying he’d seen you that morning without a shirt on weighing yourself. And why he’d been able to see every single bone on your torso sticking out.”

 

Seungmin was shocked by the older boy’s words and even more taken aback when he opened his eyes to see Hyunjin’s face contorted in worry as tears stained his pretty face. He, Kim Seungmin, had made Huang Hyunjin cry. He really was one shitty excuse of a person.

 

“We can help, Seungmin. We can get you someone to talk to, we can be there for you in moments like these, we can spend days with you reminding you how much we need you with us, how much you matter to us, if it meant you’d get better. But we need you to talk to us, we need you to help us understand.”

 

“I don’t need help. I’m fine, don’t bother with me.” Seungmin’s voice betrayed his words, broken and rusty due to the abusing sobs. Hyunjin furrowed his brows.

 

“You’re not fine and you’re most definitely not a bother. It doesn’t take a genius to see what goes on inside your head.” Seungmin’s breath hitched at Hyunjin’s words. “I know you might think you’ve been hiding it all, I know you might think we haven’t noticed. You might even think we don’t care. But we do. We’ve noticed, have been noticing for a while now. We agreed to let you take your time, to let you be the one to approach us, but it seems as though you were never going to do that.”

 

“Hyunjin, please stop.” Seungmin croaked out.

 

“You’re not alone, Seungmin.” Hyunjin ignored him. “We’re here for you, we’re here to help you when things get too much, just like you help us when we need it.”

 

“Hyunjin, please.”

 

“You can trust us. You can talk to us. We’ll always be here for you.”

 

“Hyunjin.” Seungmin cried.

 

“We’ve got you.”

 

A fresh wave of tears hit Seungmin, but this time there was no voice besides Hyunjin’s, there were no words scolding him, no judgment inside his head, but the emptiness also wasn’t there. A strange feeling, almost warm, was all he felt.

 

At that moment he realized he wasn’t as alone as he thought to be. At that moment he realized he did, in fact, have people who cared of him, people who would be willing to help him through his problems without seeing them as a bother.

 

He wasn’t as alone as he thought he was.

 

All it took was that one day, those few minutes of crying in Hyunjin’s arms, for him to gather the courage to open up to the others. They had a long talk the day after since he had obviously been too worn out to talk. He told them everything from the voices to the starving, told them what the voices told him, opened up about his deepest insecurities. He wasn’t able to tell them everything at once, it was too overwhelming.

 

But, with time, he told them everything. He got help, the right kind of help, and slowly but surely got better.

 

Every now and then the voices come back and haunt him, but he doesn’t have to deal with them on his own anymore. Now he knows he has people around him that are willing to help him through those tough moments.

 

Life is difficult, as it has always been, but thankfully he has the right people to guide him. He’s not alone.

 

And he likes to think he never will be.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

**Author's Note:**

> the funny thing is i was in this really shitty writer's block and then i saw this seungmin thread on twitter and literally out of no where i decided i needed to appreciate the human being that is kim seungmin,  
> please love him he deserves the whole world :(  
> and no, i absolutely do not think those things of him. seungmin is extremely talented and beautiful and perfect and loveable and i will never stop loving him dear lord he's precious hold on i think i just died a litte
> 
> anyways, i hope you enjoyed! If you did then please leave a comment and give this a kudos!!
> 
> Until next time!


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